FOXBORO -- The Patriots appear to really have been into Florida cornerback Duke Dawson, who they selected at No. 56 overall in the second round Friday night.
Speaking afterwards, Patriots director of player personnel Nick Caserio admitted the Patriots were talking about him at No. 43 overall before they traded back.
"So when you're looking up there you're assessing the value of the player and looking at it relative to what your options may be," he said. "If you were going to pick the same player – I mean, that's a player that we theoretically were going to talk about at No. 43, so if you can get the same player at a later time and pick up an extra pick or two along the way, it makes some decent sense to do that."
On a conference call, Dawson said there was a 50/50 chance of him coming out of college before last year's draft, but ultimately he stayed in school one more year. Because of this, the Patriots have been working on him for a few years, including hosting him at Gillette Stadium this past spring.
"This was a player who actually thought about declaring as an underclassmen last year, so we've been tracking him or doing work on him for the past few years," Caserio said. "He may not have started but he's played a lot of football. Like you said, he was a third corner or the third safety. You talk about [Vernon] Hargreaves or [Teez] Tabor or Quincy Wilson. He was in the mix and he was competitive with that group. This guy has played a lot of football against a lot of good people and in a good program. So on paper he may have started X amount of games, but he's played a lot of football and you can see that on a weekly basis."
Dawson has experience at all spots in the secondary and said he feels comfortable at them all. His versatility likely stood out to New England and made him a player it identified early in the process.
